Friday, March 13, 2009

Manifesto, Part Duh

This writeup comes courtesy of our own Andrew. Thats why we pay him the big bucks kids.

The 80’s were nothing if not an exciting time, full of high expectations and promise. Reagan was in office and deregulation was in full swing, with everything from electrical utilities to animal husbandry being privatized for future ruin. The cocaine pipeline was fully dilated, sending eight-balls of the purest powder straight into the soft tissue of tomorrow’s leaders. Whether it was the coke or the optimism, the laissez-faire 70’s had been ground into dust, replaced by the desire to reinvent the world in the image of…Tony “Scarface” Montana? You know, the “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” part, not the "snorting a pile of coke and dying in a hail of gunfire" part.

Human nature always overcomes, and the true nature of humans is outright laziness. As evidence, I give you movie sequels. Despite the heady optimism of the era, the sequels from the 80s were some of the worst ever conceived. In fact, “conceived” might be too kind of a word, as most of the sequels appeared to have been shat out after a night of binging on tequila, curry and Aqua-Net sprayed into a paper bag.

As evidence, I give you such celluloid gems as The Karate Kid Part II, where Ralph Macchio goes all the way to Japan to get his ass kicked; Gremlins 2, where a cute furball gets wet and turns into a monster (Sounds like my prom date, HEEEY-OOOOOO!! – Ed.); and Iron Eagle 2, the ultimate sad derivative of the original that was itself ripped off from Top Gun. Crappy movies begat crappy movies until it turned into a Mobius strip of fucking lame.

Is there a point to this diatribe? Huey Newis and the Lose and its rad 85 Mustang GT may well represent the 80s, but the team’s second run at the 24 Hours of Lemons will not be the motorsports equivalent of Teen Wolf 2. As a team, we have sworn a blood oath to be faster, stronger, louder, cuter, tanner (WTF? – Ed.) and more competitive than the original effort. We will do this through thoughtful improvements to the vehicle and our pit strategy. We will do this by not breaking down…ever. We will do this by building a time machine and going back to a time when the Mustang was new and reliable. Okay, maybe not that last part. Because seriously, a reliable Mustang doesn’t exist unless you’re talking about an actual horse. Regardless, given the opportunity to race at Reno-Fernley, Team Huey Newis and the Lose will sweep away those lingering images of suck from the 80s, give you a snootful of optimism and maybe – just maybe – drag home a bag of nickels for their trouble.